The juvenile stuck his stick into the center of the flower. Just as he had seen his adopted mother or father do many times. Only when he then gripped the stick in one foot, flipping it over and running his tongue along the end... He recoiled in both disgust and confusion. All he had tasted was the bark of his small stick.
He glanced back at his adopted father, watching as the Chiselpecker deftly stuck his own probe into the flower and pulled it out, tasting the nectar that still clung to his probe. He looked back at his boring and bad tasting stick, cocking his head to one side to focus his vision on it. Nope, definitely no nectar. What are they doing that I'm not doing?
Hours ago he had started this exercise, on the journey to completing a developmental milestone for his species. But by then, he had simply gone through the motions, licking his stick happily as if it were some game. He hadn't even bothered to flip it around. But he was getting hungry, and both his adopted parents had started to ignore his calls for food.
Both of his adopted siblings had already started to forage in this way. In fact, he turned his head to watch as his adopted sister pulled her own stick clean from a flower and licked the nectar off with much satisfaction. With a frustrated chirp, he grabbed his probe once more and stuck it back into the flower. And this time, by random chance, he happened to place his probe towards the outside of the flower, whereby it was able to brush past the nectarines located at the base of the large bracts.
And so when he pulled the stick out...
He neglected to flip it and so once again his tongue brushed against the dull-tasting bark. He dropped his stick, clacking his beak in frustration. He scanned his surrounding once more, focusing his attention on both his father and sister as they continued to diligently forage.
He finally turned his attention back to his feet and to his stick, turning his head to one side as he focused the attention of one eye on it. And as he saw it, he shifted his gaze a little further, bringing his eye closer to sharpen it more into focus. Yes! Nectar, at last!
He bent his neck down to run his tongue all along the sweet fluid, savoring its taste. With his morale lifted, he grabbed his stick to run it once more through the flower. He stabbed it into the center of the petals.
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The main protagonist of this story isn't actually a species of Chiselpecker. Instead, he is a species of brood parasite known as Crested Cuckoo Shrikes.
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A New Perspective of the Far Off Future
Short StoryA collection of short stories all of which take place in the far future, close to 200 million years in the future. Humans have long been gone and life has long since moved on, with a myriad of new fantastic forms having evolved. This new era of life...
